January 16, 2020 Finally…

So after last working on the Chessie Steam Special project almost 5 years ago, it is about time to get going on it again finally!

A lot has happening in 5 years, I moved to another city and built a new house. My LEGO was packed up and in storage for about a year and half. Another almost two years later, I am finally getting it all unpacked. I have dedicated LEGO room (okay a big closet). There is a large workbench and most of my building stock on the other side of room that I finished a few months ago and I am finishing up building some shelves on the other side to, hopefully, fit everything else.  I haven’t really been able to unpack and organize everything yet without the rest of the shelves.

I have actually worked on several LEGO projects in 2019, a few of which actually got completed. I will post about them later. Most of them are on my Facebook Pages, but I decided I wanted a regular blog that I own to really document what I’m doing.

You can see what I’ve been up to at https://www.facebook.com/custombrickmodelsohio and
https://www.facebook.com/JohnBToys

I also got a new URL that I will be using for this blog, it is johnbucy.art.  I will get it configured as soon as I can.

More to come soon!

June 3, 2015 Non-Update

A little non-update update.

The build has slowed down considerably over the last couple of months.  I stopped for a while because I was waiting on some parts to finish the detailing of the locomotive.  I received all of those parts, quite a few weeks ago actually, but I have not had a chance to do anymore building.

I don’t have a lot of time for my hobbies, so since the weather has been getting nice the time that I have has been going to my other hobby, photography.  You can see what I’ve been doing on Instagram and Flickr (links are on the right side of the page).

I will get back to the working on the engine.  I can’t put a date on it, just whenever the urge strikes me.

The other thing that I have been working on is cleaning out my basement.   I am still making progress on that, slowly, but it is getting there.  Once that is done I will have some room to set up a layout so I can actually run my trains!

April 14th, 2015 Update

A little late on this update, it has been a busy week…

Monday night I worked on the detailing some more and reworked the cab.  And, of course, realized that I still don’t have the dark blue parts that I need to finish it properly.

I also played around with the cylinders and driving rods since I am still not entirely happy with how they look and are working.

Here are a few detail shots.

April 13, 2015 Update

I got my orders from BrickLink on Friday, but didn’t get a chance to build until Sunday night.  I spent $123 on parts and of course I forgot a few things.

The last time that I worked on the engine I toyed with the idea of changing the cylinder design since I am just not that happy with how they look when compared to the prototype.  I had replace one of cylinders as an experiment.

Last night I had to tear apart the pilot truck to replace some parts with the correct color so that led me to work some more on the cylinder design.  This is actually my original design before I ended up going with a variation of Tony Sava’s design.

I actual like this design better, I think that it looks more prototypical and I really like the piston rod moving in and out of the cylinder (technic brick).  I think this looks more realistic.  Of course there is a problem.  The pilot truck will not move around this cylinder, it is just too big.  The only solution would be to spread the pilot trucks wheels apart even further so they would, but they are already farther apart than they should be so I really cannot do that.

So after wasting over an hour, I put the original cylinders back on.  Luckily I didn’t destroy them so it wasn’t that hard.  The hardest part was getting the front end attached again since I did have to rework it slightly to get it to attach over the new cylinders.

So needless to say, I didn’t get too far due to the wasted time.  I did swap out a lot of parts that were wrong before so the engine looks a little better now.  I think that I have enough pieces to do all of the detailing under the boiler so that will be my next task.  The cab also needs rework since I threw it together with what few dark blue pieces I had laying around.

Pick-A-Brick

There are advantages and disadvantages to working 5 minutes from a LEGO store…

This was my latest PaB purchase.  It seems like quite a few parts for one cup so I’m pretty happy.

Nothing too special, although I am hoping the yellow 1×1 bricks with stud on the side will be useful for the Chessie Steam Special passenger cars since they are mostly yellow.

Other than that the white 1×1 round tiles with eyes are the main pieces I wanted.

April 10, 2015 Update

Not much progress since the last update.  Last weekend was Easter so I did not have any time to work on it.

I had also been waiting on funding to be able to order the parts that I needed from BrickLink.  I did finally place a couple of good sized orders on Monday that should give me the parts that I need to finish detail, swap out some of the colors that are still wrong and hopefully make some good progress on the tender.

Hopefully the orders will get here today or tomorrow so that I can build this weekend.

April 1, 2015 Update

I decided to hold off on the detail until I can get some more parts from BrinkLink so I figured I will give the coloring on the tender a shot.

This is my first attempt at doing the yellow/dark blue curve.  It turned out okay, but it is by no means the final version.  I used 1×2 jumper plates to make the curve more gradual, but then it left me with 1/2 stud gaps which I couldn’t figure out how to fill.

My original plan was to use cheese slopes snotted in to give me a smooth curve.  However, the pieces that I need to attach them do not exist in dark blue.  There are only headlight bricks and no bricks that have a stud(s) on the side.  There are not even any brackets in dark blue that will work.

I have a couple more ideas that I am going to try, but at least I got it started.  from a distance it doesn’t look too bad, but up close, ouch!  Plus I am lacking in dark blue bricks which is the reason for all of the black at the front.

March 31, 2015 Update

Tonight I fixed a small problem that I noticed the other day with the body not sitting properly.  The problem was the angle of the firebox was preventing the body (boiler/cab) from sitting properly on the under carriage.  I removed the tiles from the top of the firebox and now it sits better.  Of course now there are visible studs so I need to replace the black brick with a couple of plates and a tile to smooth out the look.

The main work I did was starting to detail under the cab.  It is amazing how long can be spent on just little details like this.

Below are a couple of angles of the detailing.  I don’t think that this it the final version yet as I am sure that I will make changes to it once I get better parts to use.  Also the 4L lt gray bar really sticks out…I don’t have any black ones!

I have quite a large list of parts that I need from BrickLink so I will be placing orders soon.  This includes quite a few pieces that will be used in the detailing, such as hoses and bars.

March 29, 2015 Update

I made a little progress on the engine on Sunday.  Nothing too noticeable, but things that needed done.

The trailing truck has been reworked a couple of times since the last update.  It is a lot more solid, I am just not sure I like it yet.  Maybe once I get more black tiles and 1×1 plates it will look better.

I also reworked the connection between the engine and the tender.  The current state is not final, I just used what pieces I had available.  It was getting near impossible to connect the tender without a lot of hassle.  I wanted to make the connection between the two to make it easier to reach.

I started on the detailing between the drivers and the walkways, I didn’t get too far because I am lacking in most pieces that I need to do it they way that I want.

I also started on the detailing under the cab.  I am very disappointed because I realized that most of the detail will have to be on the trailing truck  which is going to limit what I can do and make it look even stranger when going around a curve.

With the very WIP tender.  Notice that she is about 5 track length long with her tender.  From what I found in my research, she normally ran with 2 tenders…

Starting to detail under the cab

Starting to detail under the walkways

March 25, 2015 Update

I was going to post this last week, but the time got away from me.

This is the state of my Chessie Steam Special as of March 25, 2015.  My write up on Eurobricks.com from last week is here.

I definitely have a lot more work to do on her.  You can tell there are still some wrong colors and some wrong pieces here and there.  Such as the headlight bricks on the back of the cab.  I do not have any regular dark blue bricks?!?  She is also missing detailing.  I have not started on that yet.

I will post updates periodically of my progress as I get a chance to work on her.  This picture was taken on a Wednesday and I didn’t get a chance to work on her again until Sunday.

Since I just started this blog, I am thinking about going back to beginning of the build and posting some earlier pictures to show my progress and things that I discovered/learned along the way.